[ale] Fully functional desktop [Was: Greetings and introduction]

[Greg Freemyer]

> > I still use XP as my desktop at work as well.  I then use FreeNX to
> > give me a Linux desktop on a test server.
> >
> > I went to the IBM/Intel/Red Hat presentation last week.
> >
> > I now want to redo my desktop computer as an Intel/AMD cpu with the
> > new VT technology.
> >
> > Then have SUSE 10.1 (coming shortly) as my host OS, Xen as the
> > hypervisor and run 2 guest OSes: SUSE and XP.
> >
> > I have not seen any benchmarks for this kind of setup, but it seems
> > Xen is very efficient and should only introduce a couple percent
> > overhead for the SUSE guest and an acceptable amount of delay into the
> > XP operations.
> >
> > What I don't know is what, if any, desktop computers support this yet.
> >  Per the presentation the computer would need a VT enabled chip and a
> > BIOS with the appropriate support.
> >
> > Greg
> > --
> > Greg Freemyer
> > The Norcross Group
> > Forensics for the 21st Century
> > _______________________________________________
> > Ale mailing list
> > Ale at ale.org
> > http://www.ale.org/mailman/listinfo/ale
> >
>
> Does XP work with Xen?  I read an article(I think in Linux Journal)  about
> it not supporting XP yet.  If it does then Xen really sounds like a
> promising option.
>

Per the presentation last week Intel began shipping CPUs with the
required VT support at some point in 2005 (Dec. 31??).

Tech details at http://www.intel.com/technology/computing/vptech/

AMD is supposed to have a solution of their own, but I don't know
anything about it.

I believe XEN already supports the new Intel VT technology, so if you
can find a new PC with the new VT support the whole thing should work
today.  Or at least that is the impression I came away with last week.

It is not expected XEN will support XP on CPUs that don't have this
new technology, so to get this you will have to spend some money on
hardware.

Greg
--
Greg Freemyer
The Norcross Group
Forensics for the 21st Century